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This section was my workspace for philosophy essays between July 2006 and April 2008.
I call this "Prehistoric Kilroy" because it gave me practice for more
disciplined essays in Kilroy Cafe.Also see my philophical blog and Twitter feed.

Issue #17, 9/12/2006

The Tyranny of Leisure

By Glenn CampbellFamily Court Philosopher

In one part of Las Vegas is the Family Court,
which graphically illustrates a deprivation of
resources. Children who pass through this place,
both as foster children and juvenile delinquents,
are almost always in need of services that the
government can't give them. Their problems usually
trace to a lack of parental resources, mental
health resources, mentoring resources, educational
resources or monetary resources. Apart from the
occasional "spoiled brat," almost all of the
children here need more adult attention.

In other parts of town, you have the casinos,
which are massive monuments to the waste of
resources. Adults use these facilities to fritter
away their time and money, to the benefit of no
one.

It is wishful thinking to want to unite the two.
Those wasted resourcesin casinos and a
million other adult diversionswill never be
united with the needs of children. Still it makes
me wonder why all this waste must exist.

The waste of excess resources is called "leisure."
In leisure, people are using their time and money
for some ultimately meaningless activity that
contributes to no long-term goal. Why are people
drawn to do this? Why can't they be productive
all the time?

If you are fighting to just to feed yourself and
your family, you wouldn't call this leisure. If
you have already fulfilled your basic needs, and you
look around for something to do, that's when
leisure steps in.

Leisure (otherwise known as "luxury") tends to
suck up whatever extra resources you happen to
have. If for example, a worker gets a raise, they
tend to buy a bigger house or acquire more
high-maintenance goods until, effectively, they
are just as poor and trapped as they were
before.

The Pyramids of Egypt are a tragic monument to
leisure. Here was a society that happened to be
rich enough to have some extra resourcessome
"leisure"but the leaders absorbed all these
resources with these massively useless public
works projects.

Leisure, I contend, is an affront to decency, and
I believe it should be stamped outat least in my
own life.

For example, I never gamble; I won't go to
sporting events; I don't drink; I don't watch TV;
I won't go on a cruise; I refuse to "waste time"
on anything.

Yet, I don't feel that I am depriving myself of
anything, that I am stressed or that I am simply a
"workaholic." I enjoy life, but I also believe
that every moment is precious and shouldn't be
frittered away on anything meaningless.

Leisure is a sin. It is a gross display of
decadence that is especially offensive to the
people who don't have it. How can you play tennis
or buy a Mercedes when you know that thousands in
the community are suffering for lack of these
resource that you are now wasting?

Leisure is a delusion that is sold to us by
advertizing and media. When we have extra
resources, we are supposed to buy things with it.
We are supposed to buy a boat, play golf, or go
down to the casino to gamble. If we have the time
or money, we are supposed to buy supposed
"luxuries," which it turns out don't really make
us happy.

I say that you can completely eliminate all
leisure from your life and not have lost
anything. This doesn't mean you need to "work"
all the time, but you should never be doing
anything frivolous or wasteful either.

A leisure-free life is not necessarily drudgery.
It can be a happy and relaxed existance. A life
without leisure doesn't mean that you are working
all the time or that you never rest. You just
avoid wasting resources.

A life without leisure can consist of a rich and
lively variety of activities, each of which fall
into one of these five categories....

Production. This is otherwise known as
"work." This is where you use your time to
actually produce sometime -- be it gainful
employment, fighting for a cause or doing some
creative work. This is the time when you
hopefully generate some long-lasting product.

Maintenance. This is the time you spend
in personal hygiene, attending to your health, and
maintaining the various tools you need to get
things done. Taking a shower or brushing your
teeth is not leisure; nor is doing your laundry or
changing the oil in your car. Going to work to
make the money to support the the rest of your
activities is actually maintenance, not
production, if you are not producing any
meaningful product. All of these things are
probably essential activities, even if they are not
directly "productive." They are certainly not
"leisure."

Education. This is the time you spend
learning more about the world around you.
Education is reading a useful book or learning a
new skill, as long as it promises to have some
value to you later. (Learning to belly-dance is
leisure, not education.) Education does not
necessarily have to be directed toward a specific
goal, however. Random exploration of, say, a
neighborhood or country you have never visited can
be educational. Travel can be part of ones
education, but only when it is active and
exploratory. It is not educational to take a
cruise or fly to Mexico and sit on a beach for a
week; that would be empty leisure.

Meditation. This is the time you spend
doing pretty much nothing except thinking.
Meditation gives you a chance to solve problems
and integrate knowledge. Going to sleep at night is a form of
meditation, as is going for a walk or sitting on a
street corner watching the world go by. Sometimes
driving is meditative or just lying in bed
stairing at the ceiling. The important thing is that your mind is
free to wander and is not externally occupied.
Watching TV or surfing the internet may
occasionally be educational, but it is not
meditative, because it directly occupies your
thoughts and keeps you from thinking about your
problems. Meditation is a free-form
opportunity to do just that.

Negotiation. This is the time you spend
interacting with others. This interaction can be
relaxed, and you might call it socializing, but
there is always some purpose in it. Negotiating
is the process of getting what you want from
someone else. Of course, they are never going to
give you exactly what you want, so you have to
compromise. Parenting is a long process of
negotiation with your children. You want to push
them in a certain direction; they resist, and
you gradually find a middle ground. Negotiation
does not have to be harsh or demanding; it can be
fun and creative. Playing with your kid may seem
like leisure, but as long as something is being
taught and learned, it is really negotiation.
Empty leisure, on the other hand, would be going
to a party and getting drunk. There is no real
negotiation or social development in that.

Within the categories above, there can be travel,
romance, reading, an occasional movie and a
palatable meal or two. You can live a
rich, creative, sociable, and comfortable life
without ever resorting to leisure. In fact, by
avoiding leisure, you can end up being a lot
happier than people wealthier than you who are burdened
by their leisure.

As much as it is advertized otherwise, leisure
merely drains the vital essance from your life.
Wasted hours turn into years, and in the end you
have blown away most of your potential on this
planet.

Whenever you find yourself "killing time," you're
in trouble, because the time you kill can never be
brought back.

Reader Comments

“im not entirly convinced, and am not about to change my habits in the sightest”
—felix, 18, student 8/30/07 (rating=2)

“Some good points, but I disagree that learning to belly-dance doesn't count as education. Even if the value of new knowledge isn't immediately obvious, nothing you learn is ever truly wasted.”
— 8/31/07 (rating=3)